I am a Ph.D. research psychologist, professor of psychology at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College, former gender scholar at Stanford University, and mother of two, and I’ve spent my career studying sex and gender at work, at home, and in the world at large. I’m the author of two books about gender and family: Raising Boys Without Men, which introduced readers to boys in single and two-mother families, and Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers, and the Changing American Family, about the father-daughter bond in a time of unbridled female opportunity. I’ve written for a wide range of national and international media, including The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, DuJour, USA Today, and Psychology Today, and am currently working on a book about the evolving role of women in the workplace and the new challenges they face. I’m a frequent guest expert for such outlets as Bloomberg, Today, GMA, Katie, and NPR. I can be reached through my website, peggydrexler.com

Over Working Holds Women Back

A CDC study found that 16 percent of women ages 18 to 44 reported feeling “very tired,” “exhausted,” or otherwise worn out most days, compared with 9 percent of men in the same age range. Is it because women are taking on more than their share? Or because they have difficulty saying no?

The answer, probably, is both.

We know that a historically high number of women are now the primary breadwinners for their households. The Pew Research Center reports that among families with kids under age 18, 37 percent of wives earn more than their husbands, up from 11 percent in 1960. At the same time, although women are contributing to the family pot more significantly than ever before, their domestic responsibilities are not shrinking; studies show, for example, that working women still do more housework than men.

Meanwhile, the fact that women work as hard as men but, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, are paid an estimated 81 percent of what men are paid for performing the same jobs means that many women work longer hours to earn just as much—or feel like they should. That drive, however, only makes the situation worse, as studies show that overworking actually helps hold women back: a new study by sociologists from Indiana University and Cornell finds that overworking—putting in 50 hours a week or more—has helped slow growth in women occupying professional and managerial occupations.

And yet women keep saying yes to work, to family, to most everything.

It’s also important to acknowledge that the CDC study doesn’t quite say that more women are feeling tired, but that more women report feeling tired. It’s possible that women report fatigue more often than men, since we also know that women tend to experience stress more acutely than men. Case in point: according to a number of studies women and men experience, and respond to, conflicts at work in very different ways. Women, for instance, tend to feel conflict more deeply. A survey by the American Psychological Association found that women consistently report higher levels of work stress, tension, and frustration than men. More than men, they are inclined to feel under appreciated and underpaid—exhausting for sure. An Australian study found that women respond to such work-related conflict and stress by working harder.

Stressed out men, on the other hand, are more inclined to call in sick or otherwise “check out.” One reason, perhaps, they sleep better. A 2005 National Sleep Foundation poll found that women are more likely than men to have trouble falling, and staying, asleep—something Liza, a woman I interviewed, knew all too well. “While I tossed and turned and fretted,” she said, “my husband snoozed peacefully. I’m not sure a bomb would wake him up, never mind worrying about how our daughter would do in the school play!”

Eventually Liza realized that her chronic list making, and task mastering, might have been helping her organizationally, but it was hindering her mentally. And it wasn’t doing her family, her friends, or anyone else she seemed to value over herself any favors either. “If I couldn’t do it for myself,” she said, “I needed to learn to let go for everyone else.” Until women choose to take care of themselves, however, they’ll continue to suffer most.

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